“I never thought I would own a machete, let alone a couple, and also use them regularly. I have lived in western Pennsylvania most of my life and have not had to confront any issues related to the wild growth of bamboo in my life until now. Four years ago I moved to be closer to SVC. Found a wonderful old house on a nice plot of two acres with plenty of uniqueness … including a 40-yard stretch of bamboo that had been planted by a previous owner who was a native Hawaiian. It’s cool. It’s unique. It’s actually evergreen through the winter too … but it’s also invasive and has about a three year life cycle. So now I am confronted with how to maintain this stand of bamboo that has literally a couple thousand standing dead stalks at this point. Not as easy as it looks or sounds. By the way, a nice little party trick is to cut a little section and throw it in a camp fire. Each section is air tight, so it steams up and ... BANG ... explodes like a shotgun going off! Try it sometime if you have bamboo available campfire side … and if you don’t, I know where you can get some.”
-Dr. Anthony Serapiglia